<DIV><p>Ruby is famous for being easy to learn, but most users only scratch the surface of what it can do. While other books focus on Ruby's trendier features, <i>The Book of Ruby</i> reveals the secret inner workings of one of the world's most popular programming languages, teaching you to write clear, maintainable code.</p><p>You'll start with the basics—types, data structures, and control flows—and progress to advanced features like blocks, mixins, metaclasses, and beyond. Rather than bog you down with a lot of theory, <i>The Book of Ruby</i> takes a hands-on approach and focuses on making you productive from day one. As you follow along, you'll learn to:</p> <ul><li>Leverage Ruby's succinct and flexible syntax to maximize your productivity</li> <li>Balance Ruby's functional, imperative, and object-oriented features</li> <li>Write self-modifying programs using dynamic programming techniques</li> <li>Create new fibers and threads to manage independent processes concurrently</li> <li>Catch and recover from execution errors with robust exception handling</li> <li>Develop powerful web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework</li> </ul><p>Each chapter includes a "Digging Deeper" section that shows you how Ruby works under the hood, so you'll never be caught off guard by its deceptively simple scoping, multithreading features, or precedence rules.</p><p>Whether you're new to programming or just new Ruby, <i>The Book of Ruby</i> is your guide to rapid, real-world software development with this unique and elegant language.</p></div>